Anarchy Bang: Introducing Episode Eleven - Anarcho-Capitalism

This Sunday... we will try to discuss anarcho-capitalism. While we agree that ancaps are not anarchists in the sense that we use the word we don't think that means they're entirely without consideration. Why do people who argue for the non-aggression principle want to associate with the rabble who are most definitely aggressive? "private property anarchism" versus an anarchism of the abolition of property. But most importantly for our conversation is that this phenomenon mostly seems to exist in the US alone. What is it in US history and intellectual history that makes this obsession with property such a flash point? What is it about rights and principles that attracts or is this just another meme fight for the internet?

Comments

I feel the same way about ancapism and agorism the way I feel about ancomism and syndicalism, the difference is that the latter is wrongfully given endogenous legitimacy even though-I would argue-they were essentially somewhat entryist discourses into anarchism as it has originally structured by Proudhon and Bakunin. Ancapism essentially had failed to gain entry the way ancom ideology has.

It's important to understand the context of why ancapism rose in the first place, for one thing I think it it has a greater outer anglo-american presence then some people think, but in regards to it's development as I see it it is basically what happens when the Tuckerite discursive niche degenerates due to a post-WWs context where proles and humanity as a whole get greater access to property and capital. The quantified effects of all that will create a biome for something like ancapism to exist.

I listened to Thaddeus Russell's interview with Lilly Forester recently and I have to say that these guys do have some redeeming qualities beyond a problematic discourse. Providing that they are not of that white-western nonsense there can be shared sensibilities in human intercoursive enterprises beyond political economy. They just like exchange and transactional dynamics WAY too much to the point of profit and privatization. It's the other coin side to the left-anarchists who love organization and civic activism.

As I've said before and again, what would help the biome of anarchism would be a return to a Proudhonian baseline position ala Shawn WIlbur with communism and, obviously capitalism, being jetisoned from anarchism. In the context of the complicated arrangement of things today you do have to start with some kind of exchange, but deviations away from that should be decided by diffuse breakoff associations not some singular system. While it does not seem obvious to some communism is just as problematic to anarchism and anarchy as capitalism is. A critique and an exodus away from exchange does not entail communism in the least.

In the meantime however there can be context specific arrangements with ancaps that can work in the context of this world. Let's remember that in the 80s and 90s the likes of Bob Black was in shared projects with people like Mike Hoy. I don't see why discursive arrangements like that can't be pursued again with halfway meeting points. There are things related to Blockchain machineology for instance that I would like to see tried without the fetish of currency and exchange(though it will certainly figure in to some degree). I would like to see some type of parallel libertarian anarchist counter power that is at least a counterweight to the next round of state facilitated new deals something that was missing in the 20th century. For this to happen ancap and com need to go away and be replaced by a neo-mutualist baseline.

"basically what happens when the Tuckerite discursive niche degenerates due to a post-WWs context where proles and humanity as a whole get greater access to property and capital. The quantified effects of all that will create a biome for something like ancapism to exist."
^^ Would have to be one of the most concise and discerning explanation for the emergence of anarcho-capitalism in NA my SirBro!

Which Shawn Wilbur has hinted at faint but it is there and it has to do with the structure of communism and Russian collectivist ideology being theorized into anarchism as it originally came out of Proudhon. For me the more natural direction for anarchism was to go in the direction that Armand took it and not where Kropotkin took it. Overall Krops is cool but there are inherent issues with his commie structure of thought.

I am by no means saying that Proud and Baks in anyway configured the ancap nonsense. If that's what your thinking you've misread my analysis. I would say that anarchism should be about a war on the state more then a war on class.

Nope. Proudhon only gets credit for his edgy ideas, he was hopelessly utopian in practical terms. I'm saying if you let Bakunin have a major claim to the origins of anarchism, you can't escape his practical activity, which was literal class war, with the goal of wealth redistribution, etc. So there's nothing "entryist" about what most of the ancoms are talking about. They've been there since the start.

Ancap is completely at odds with this, comes way later and is almost completely incoherent but definitely "entryist".

and yes there needed to be some major corrections which the nobleman and the prince did indeed do but collectivity(reifed) communism and class war was not the way to go about doing it. There's also the issue of wanting the same political economic complexity of Proudhon without any kind of exchange scheme which has repeatedly been shown to be unworkable. You can make a lot of criticism of Proudhon in terms of lacking radicality, but practicality is one of his strengths. There's a reason things start with him but don't end. In the context of a world where exchange is the name of the game, he's basically the training wheels for many.

The ancap stuff is obviously more incoherent but that does not take ancom ideology and syndicalist strategy off the hook. Proudhon still works best in regards to a solvent system(which I don't advocate) and marginal deviations from him make more sense from an individualist associational contracting(as in shedding and subtracting complications not contract ideology) egoist sense and not a commie syndie class war sense.

Dude ... I said forget Proudhon. Bakunin is the part of your argument that makes no sense.

YOU want to chuck all the stuff that became leftism but you can't. Just like you can't rip the foundation out from under a house without collapsing it. You don't have to like it but don't BS about getting rid of it or how Bartleby has some kind of interesting alternative.

I’m not talking about ripping foundations I’m talking about hindsight surgical corrections to what is clearly a set of discursive blockages(ancap what you disinfect against of course) in the form of collectivity class war and communism. These were addendums to Pierre not foundations from him and they actually make anarchism worse in the long run.

The alternative to PJP is of course Stirner but he represents something entirely different from binary elective warfare. He is THE radical expression of a pure philosophical discourse of anarchy and there is no communism to be found in his ideas.

If you want a better example of someone who succeeded Proudhon properly without any kind of collectivist class war commie nonsense look no further then Emile Armand. He simply took the federational ideas of PJP and injected some individualism egoism and radical loose and diffuse association into them with a sense of everyday life practice. THAT is a better example of anarchism without the baggage of collectivity class war and communism.

Really sot, you think there's something tyrannical about people like Kim Kardashian or Kanye West. Rich and poor is a functional consequence of a status game not a tyrannical intention. It's been fairly well demonstrated that when humans reach a degree of material complexity they like to compare and contrast, that's where rich and poor come in. You see the formative form of this in a culture like the Himba where it's more status then class. Things like class come later as a functional consequence. If you understand the anthropology of it all there is literally nothing to go to war with. The problem is power and opting out of the organized societal apparatus structures. In this regard someone like Emile Armand takes anarchism in a better post-Proudhonian direction then Bakunin or Kropotkin does and he does it on individualist egoist association driven terms.

It's class war that's the actual larpy hot air. If you're familiar with Sun Tzu or Machiavelli then it's not even a legitimate definition of war.

How are they not part of the last 200 years-which isn’t just geopolitical-sot? When you talk about the dynamics of rich and poor you have to talk about everything. Also the non anarchy problem is a lot older the 200 years. It’s AT LEAST 10000 years and the problem is MUCH deeper then class which essentially, at least partially, began as voluntary servitude.

At least as far as growing into civilization goes. All of wealth and civilization is a circus be it the media entertainers or the money managers.

If you want to get to the source of what drives power you need to focus on the knowledge root of it not the political economic military branches. Billionaires are but branching distractions, and many produce the psychology everyday by dreaming of winning the lottery instead of focusing on the one thing that can't be bought, the time of your life.

Which brings us back to the problem of unions. Unions are about perpetuating the logic of wealth. Free labour federations are more about time and getting out of work.

Hey, clearly you don't find economics interesting and that's your choice to be clueless. But it's strange to have so many opinions on subjects that you're willfully ignorant about. Never stops you tho! Carry on ziggles, as I know you will.

Even tough their ideological underpinnings seem decidedly shonky I don't mind most of the AnCaps. The NAP afaic is very honorable. What does get on my proverbial t*ts are those smug f*cks who swan around thinking they are the chosen people.

in concept, the nap makes sense; like some kind of pragmatic semi-pacifists. the problem for me is how that is integrally related to their idea that production and consumption can and should continue unabated, except with their private property protected by their private armies. as if obtaining the resources needed for their perpetuation of the capitalist mentality of ever increasing production/consumption - with the profit/greed factor still the motivator - somehow doesn't require aggression. it is every bit as delusional as anarcho-commies thinking their utopia can exist with no state.

You can put labels on beliefs, like ancaps, muties, ancoms, communalists, appelistes, and commune-ists, but you may as well put in X-tians, all religions, all political flavors and aesthetics including YOUR sacred anarchists, all ideological "-ISTS" , including the orthodox nihilists, they all function from obeying the Other external and spook, only nihil-esque Stirnerians stand aloof and on their own, distinctly unique and prestigious amongst the lowly worshipping horde!

is that having an attachment to the increasing re-production/consumption of the planet we live on is clearly going to fail at some point or another. Now we actually have the data: destroying the environment with a vague moral obligation to other human beings is going to keep killing off the non-human world at a faster and faster pace, and soon the giant mass known as "the human race" is going to also experience some genocidal reduction as well.

Modern capitalism is completely different from the peasant capitalism that is dying out in the west, and for all of us "privileged" non-anarcho-capitalists we know that we can't benefit from going back to the same styles of production that dominated civilizations 100-200 years ago. Anarchism is obviously a complete joke for anyone who tries to capitalize on it. I know that there are all sorts of bookstores on and offline but they are just survival and hobbyist outlets.

I think there's something worth exploring, considering that there are likely more ancaps than anti-capitalist anarchists in NA, but I wouldn't mind hearing more about anarchists doing (or not doing) capitalism, either.

It's early days. Perhaps the AnarchyBang crew could invite some non-post-lefties to call in for a short convo, say 5-10 mins. There's couple of really interesting people on this side of the pond who could be useful. Or even frpm Ireland like Andrew Flood. The show starts at 8.00pm London/Dublin time so it's entirely feasible.